Visual Storytelling: Camera Techniques and Documentary Styles

Posted on Mar 16, 2025 in Arts and Humanities

Shot Types and Their Impact

Shot types are fundamental tools in visual storytelling, each serving a distinct purpose. They can be categorized into three main groups:

  • Close-ups: Emphasize a specific action or expression.
  • Intermediate Levels: Mimic normal viewing distance.
  • Distant Planes: Establish the subject within their environment.

General Shot Types

  • General Plan: Quickly indicates the action’s coordinates.
  • Midplane: Shows a description of longer duration, distinguishing the subject.
  • American Plane: Cuts the figure at the knee.
  • Median Plane: Contextualizes the situation, cut at the waist and chest.
  • Close (Close Up): Expresses emotion, from the shoulders up.
  • First and Fore: Maximum closeness, from the mentor to the eyebrow.

Camera Movement Techniques

Camera movements add dynamism and perspective to a scene.

  • Pan: Rotation on the camera’s axis.
  • Tilt Up: Vertical movement upwards.
  • Tilt Down: Vertical movement downwards.
  • Rocker Movement
  • Traveling (Truck): The camera moves with the subject.
  • Straight-line arc-curve-motion: Object must appear in the foreground.
  • Dolly In: Translational motion forward.
  • Dolly Out: Translational motion backward.

Optic Movements

  • Zoom: Continuous focal length change, flattening the image.
  • Pan Focus: Shifts focus between foreground and background.

Camera Positioning

  • Head On: Fixed camera, movements within the frame.
  • Tail Away: Subject enters the frame, fixed camera.
  • Cross Screen: Crosses the plane of the camera.

Camera View and Visual Axis

The camera’s height and visual axis influence the viewer’s perception.

  • Visual Axis Height: Average height of a population.
  • Visual Axis: Provides coherent, realistic information.
  • Against Chopped: From below, elevates the person.
  • Floor Level: Sees the world from a low perspective.
  • Cerritos: Bird’s eye view.
  • Combination of Shaft Height: For example, looking up at a seated person.

Documentary Genres and Screenplay Elements

Documentaries capture and combine fragments of reality.

Documentary Genres

Documentaries can be:

  • Adventure
  • Science
  • History
  • Propaganda
  • Ethnographic
  • Poetic
  • Institutional

Documentary scenes communicate, combined and superimposed, expressing a point of view.

Screenplay Elements

  • Research: Participation or non-participation, interviews, and public images.
  • Story or Fiction Scenario: Invented by the writer (music, fiction, historical, horror, auteur).
  • Auteur: The person who prepares the script.
  • Clip: A short, popular genre.

Screenplay Structure

The screenplay is the film’s text.

  1. Conflict: What is the conflict, how does it develop, and what is the outcome?
  2. Literary Script: Characters, scene structure, and creativity.
  3. Story: Images of the main scenes.
  4. Story Line: Script with length of time.